With the students of grade 6 (11 years old) we are continuing our adventure to discover the colors. Today we worked with the complementary colors on black and white photocopies depicting flowers. To color the pictures, we used oil pastels and we cut the photocopies into three parts. Each piece of 'picture has been colored with a pair of complementary colors and then the three parts were … [Read more...]

Wayne Thiebaud is an American artist who worked in the '60s. He is often associated with the Pop Art because of his choice of subjects (objects symbol of consumerism such as cakes, candies, chewing gum, hot dogs, cosmetics, toys). Thiebaud, however, has always refused to be inscribed in an artistic movement. In the 8th grade class we were inspired by this American artist to draw our cakes, … [Read more...]

We're still working on the different ways to represent the illusion of space, and in the 8th grade classes we have created this collage, drawing tubes striped, circular or square, with colored pencils. Applying shading to these objects we added the three-dimensional effect. We cut out the tubes, and then we glued them on black cardboard, so that seemed a bunch of piled tubes. I think it's very … [Read more...]

In the classes of the 7th Grade we are still working on the textures, but this time we are using oil pastels and discovering all the technical possibilities of these colors. After drawing a large tree with a black marker, we colored the four areas of the background with the colors of the four seasons. The oil pastels have been overlapped and blended to create nuanced color effects, and finally … [Read more...]

After looking at some abstract works of art, painted from the beginning of the twentieth century, we have tried the technique of oil pastels to create small abstract works.
The artist who inspired us was mostly Wassily Kandinsky (have a look on Wikipedia), Russian painter and theorist of 1900.
The students of Grade 9 have experienced as oil pastels can be mixed, overlapped and combined … [Read more...]

Modigliani’s portraits are so characteristic that it is easy to copy them! Here is a simple technique with pencil, oil pastels and baby oil to imitate the unmistakable style of this artist.
We can start to copy the contours of the figure
with a pencil, simplifying the lines and shapes.
Modigliani’s Works of art
Then we color the entire surface with a … [Read more...]

Students of grade 8 are drawing their own folders with oil pastel on a black cardboard. These drawings are freely inpired by the works of art of Klee, Kandinsij, Delaunay and other abstract artists.
composition of folders (class 3C)
I ragazzi della terza C hanno decorato la loro cartelletta per i disegni con i pastelli ad olio, ispirandosi ai … [Read more...]

A simple exercise to learn lights, shadow and colour shades. You draw some shapes like bottles, spheres, cups, cylinders and then you colour them with oil pastels, blending the colours with a 3D effect. Eventually you cut the shapes and paste them on a black cardboard. … [Read more...]

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The Author

I’m Miriam Paternoster, an Italian art teacher in a Middle School of North Italy. This blog is a place to share and explore lessons, educational systems and techniques, with other art teachers and classrooms around the world.